Américo Paredes,

George Washington Gómez Lecture II

Ramon Saldivar

Stanford University

04/19/23 Paredes, George Washington Gómez

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Américo Paredes (1915-1999)

With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and its Hero (1958)

“Problem of Identity in a Changing Culture” (1978)

04/19/23 Paredes, George Washington Gómez

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“Residual Cultural Order” Raymond Williams, Marxism and

Literature (1977) The Seditionists of 1915 The Plan of San Diego

Revolutionary Manifesto Spanish-speaking Republic of the

Southwest Multicultural polity

Reprisals

04/19/23 Paredes, George Washington Gómez

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War of Maneuver and War of Position

-- Antonio Gramsci

War of Maneuver: Direct Action Culture as Symbolic Action

Strategy of indirect cultural resistance

Music and other Oral Forms Corridos/Ballads

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What’s in a name?

Or, Identity, Naming, and the Symbolic Cultural Order of Subjectification,

“And what shall we name him?” GWG, 15

“A great man who will help his people” GWG, 16

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Louis Althusser: Interpellation

Process whereby an “individual” is “appointed as a subject in and by the

specific familial [political] ideological configuration in which it is ‘expected’ once it has been conceived” “Ideological State Apparatuses” (1971)

Repressive & Ideological State Apparatuses

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Mikhail Bakhtin

Speech Genres: Forms of utterances Permissable locutions Normative restraints on intentions Boundaries of what one can say

and not say

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Identity and the Instability of the Name

GWG II, 4, pp. 50-51 “Why am I, I” GWG III, 1, p. 110 “Indian name” GWG III, 7, p. 137 “hate his name” GWG III, 9, pp. 147-8 “Anglo-

american selves” GWG III, 9, p. 150 “name of

contradiction”

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Pablo Picasso, Man with a Clarinet. 1911 - 1912

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The Function of Folklore

Language itself Common sense Popular belief The entire system of daily life

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Schools and the Process of Americanization

American Ideological system Mexican folkloric cultural system

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Identity and the Economic, Social, and Cultural Forces

GWG II, 1, p 36 Pre-capitalist subsistence agrarian

life replaced by Modern large-scale market-

oriented agri-business The last scene of Manifest Destiny

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“Leader of His People”

Fantasy, Utopia and the Political Unconscious

The shock of the Ending